“Microsoft—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.
Google—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.
Apple is a company that produces amazing, human-usable products. I love them for the same reason I love any such company, and I forgive them their eccentricities because their products are so amazing. They make decisions that I’m told are bad for me, yet I don’t see that reflected in their products as I use them.
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90% Agree. I tend to give Google a little more leeway than Microsoft, because they do frequently make things which really are tremendously useful, and are still coming out with new stuff. This is usually done because it’s something they want to do, or feel they have something new to offer, rather than Microsoft’s attitude of just trying to take the other dogs’ bones rather than looking for their own, using their size to intimidate.
100% Agree on Apple though. To my mind, they make amazing efforts to make technology usable. To paraphrase Penny Arcade’s Tycho, it’s all about exposing functionality. There’s often a lot more under the hood, but the stuff most people want is right out front, and people have thought and argued and fought to make it that way. That buys them some significant leeway from me— they’ve built up a lot of trust credit by showing that they can make what I deem to be very good decisions. If something they do doesn’t feel right to me, I therefore trust that it will become right in time, or that there’s a VERY good reason why it shouldn’t.
